Case Number 21612: Small Claims Court

NIGHT FLIGHT

The Charge

Every night men stride the high, dark clouds...bearing hope to the
anxious...strength to the weak...solace to the dying.

The Case

A young boy lies sick in Brazil, on the verge of death. The hospital is out
of the life-savings serum he needs and the nearest vial is all the way in Peru.
To get it in time, a brave pilot must fly overnight across the Andes with no
lights to guide him and a storm brewing in the sky. If the pilot can make it,
not only will the child get the medicine he needs, it will mark a new era in the
young history of flight.

When Night Flight arrived in theaters in 1933, there was still some
danger and novelty in airplane travel. Now, though, there is only nostalgia
about a time when flying was easy and fun. Upon its release, I'm sure the move
seemed exotic, drawing gasps from crowds at the aerial heroics. Indeed, it was a
big hit for MGM at the time. Today, it looks like a bunch of airplane stock
footage, which, of course, it was.

Night Flight actually features a pair of pilots, each on separate
missions to deliver the mail. Neither story is very interesting and both are
decidedly lacking in drama or suspense. The first involves this kid's medicine,
but the two scenes involving him are the very first and the very last, making me
strongly suspect that they were bookends added to give the film a shred of human
drama. That story features Robert Montgomery (Lady in the Lake) as the
pilot and Myrna Loy (Petticoat Fever) as his free-wheeling girlfriend.
The second plot, which involves a flight entering a storm with only an hour of
fuel left and far more distance to travel, features Clark Gable (Gone with
the Wind) in a near wordless, and near pointless, role as the pilot. His
wife is played by Helen Hayes (A Farewell to Arms) and she cries a lot.
In between, we have John Barrymore (Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman) as
calloused owner of the airmail company, and his brother Lionel (West of
Zanzibar) as an inspector for the company who likes hanging out with the
pilots. The giant-sized cast was clearly much of the draw for audiences, but
like Grand Hotel the year before, it proves incredibly difficult to
manage all of these stars, and the film is crushed under their weight.

Director Clarence Brown (National Velvet) relies heavily on the
flying scenes to develop suspense. I can imagine these moments working upon
release, but today they feel incredibly flat. When it cuts from wide angle stock
footage of a plane flying through the mountains to a tight close up of Clark
Gable in a fake plane in front of awful looking rear projection, it throws the
lack of nuance and subtlety of both the technology and the execution. The movie
at large has the same trouble. With the glowering bosses, carefree flyboys, and
weepy wives, Night Flight becomes one giant cliche, filled to the rim
with stock footage.

Warner Bros.' DVD for Night Flight is fairly strong. The image
transfer, while not perfect, is good for a film of its age. This is the first
time the film has appeared on DVD, and the producers have done a good job of
making the print clean. There is still the occasional bit of damage and an
overall uneven grain structure, especially in the aerial scenes, but it looks
quite a bit better than I expected. The sound is an acceptable mono mix with
relatively clear dialog, but nothing more. As extras, we get a short film about
trapeze artists and a cartoon, both of which are better than the film itself. A
decent package for a lame duck film.